


Offered and Lost

by kylostahp (hawkeward)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Past Relationship(s), centuries-old former sith lords, lots of vague references to KotORII Force philosophy, maz once held the galaxy by the throat but then walked away, maz was darth traya is what I'm saying, shut up it COULD be canon, snoke never got over it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 11:58:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6609874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkeward/pseuds/kylostahp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For their crimes, they were bound by fate and the Force, cursed to enact its will in a struggle stretched over centuries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Offered and Lost

He first makes himself known as a slow pressure at the base of her skull, like the first signs of a headache. She does not respond immediately, but fixes herself a cup of tea and chats amicably with a few of her regulars while it cools, untouched. By the time she finally descends into the castle’s underbelly and settles into a long-ago salvaged and refurbished ejection seat in the cool darkness, he has waited three hours and the pressure has become a dull, impatient throb. He has never had any patience, when it comes to her.

As shrunken and withered as she is now, she was once a far larger being in nearly every aspect—power, ambition, _presence_. Now, she allows herself to feel the Force as she hasn’t in over a century and meet him on equal ground. When she opens her mind, he surges in, a roiling wave of hunger that can never be abated, the desire to conquer, to possess. He prowls the corners of her that she has allowed him to fill, frustrated, constantly moving.

“You’ve been neglecting your stillness exercises, apprentice,” she says coolly, and he whirls to meet her eyes for the first time. They glitter cold and dark, cannier than when they last met, but the same hunger still gnaws behind them. He settles for a moment, as if chastened, then seems to remember himself and draws back to his full, restless height.

 _Maz Kanata,_ he hisses.

“Snoke,” she replies. She takes the cue from him—they had different names when they parted ways, scarred and broken and bonded. A small mercy, on her part, perhaps too easy to offer.

_It has been a long time._

“Indeed it has.” The gash that crowns him still burns as livid in the Force as the day she dealt it. It was intended to be a killing blow. The Force had other plans. “I hear you’ve claimed an apprentice.”

 _One that will walk the way of pain well. I have ensured it._ His lined mouth twitches in something like a smile. He was handsome once, she remembers, centuries ago, before they tore each other apart.

She lets him have his pride for a moment, then points out the obvious. “The Chosen One broke the cycle.” 

He whips through her mind like a storm, crawling around and over the walls she has erected, furious as a caged beast. _THE CYCLE IS NOT DEAD WHILE SKYWALKER YET LIVES!_

She says nothing, pointedly waiting for him to return to civility. He quiets, settling before her again, half-abashed and half-petulant. Old habits die hard—or perhaps the apprentice is simply never free from his master until he has mastered himself. Either way, she lets their silence stretch while he squirms, prepared to wait until he finally says the thing that he invoked their wretched bond to say.

 _Master,_ he says, finally, and it seems to shrink him to say it. _My plans would go… more smoothly with your guidance. Think of all we could accomplish together._

It is what she knew he wanted all along. A return to glorious days so long-past that the galaxy itself has forgotten them, when she and he were fierce and ruthless and invincible, hand-in-hand. A time when they stood, master and apprentice, and dared challenge the will of the Force itself.

 _I would string entire galaxies around your neck like gemstones_ , he adds fervently, or perhaps she pulls it from the hidden corners of his mind. Either way, she laughs—both at his ardor, still pursuing the memory of a long-ago woman, and at that self that would once have been tempted. 

Far away in the corporeal world, she dimly runs one hand over the ancient trunk beside her seat. It cost her dearly to acquire what lies within, but she allows him the barest glimpse—a new dawn racing toward them, brilliant and cold star-blue, born from sand and ashes, dark and light. He jerks away as if struck, rage and fear and betrayal surging within him, but she catches and clings, preventing his retreat.

“Ready your new apprentice,” she whispers into his mangled ear. “He has a great challenge ahead of him.”

She holds a moment longer while he struggles, then releases him and falls, as if from a great distance, back to what most beings would call reality. When she opens her eyes, she is Maz Kanata again.

—

Half a galaxy away, Snoke tenses rigid in his chair, muscles in his neck cording as if straining against an unseen force. He gasps once and goes slack, gulping air, sweat standing out on his corpse-pale face.

When he is able to compose himself, he touches the comm controls.

“Send for Kylo Ren.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell with me on [tumblr](http://kylostahp.tumblr.com) about KotORII and the Force.


End file.
